"But Mike will give 'em to us, if we love 'em," replied Don.
"Dat's what dey for!" said Mike.
"Oh, oh! Look Mike, see this little one stick out his tiny pink tongue," shouted Dot, excitedly.
"Him hungly! Mike git dinner!"
So, leaving Don and Dot to watch the cubs, Mike went to the cook's cabin and hunted for a bottle with a slender neck. With a red-hot wire he bored a small hole through a cork and, after filling the bottle with diluted condensed milk and oatmeal gruel, he drove the cork into the neck. He wrapped the bottle inside his coat and hurried over to the cabin with it.
The ladies and the other children had been called to the exhibition by Don, after Mike went to the kitchen, and all of them were delighted over the dear little fur-balls. Lavinia held one of the soft, velvety paws in her hands smiling at the tiny toes and pink skin underneath. Suddenly, however, the cub stretched and from the velvet paw there shot out five sharp nails, long enough to make the children gasp.
"Where does he hide them?" said Lavinia.
"Gee! I never thought bear babies had claws like that!" said Don, showing more respect for the cubs thereafter.
"Oh, Mike, what are you going to do?" asked everyone who had seen the bottle.
"Feed babbies," grinned Mike, as he opened a cub's mouth and stuck the bottle inside at an angle that would let the liquid run out—and in.